


27 club

by moroodors



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 27 club, Gen, Journal 3, Pre-Series, a tale of two stans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 15:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moroodors/pseuds/moroodors
Summary: ford and stan just try to make it to their 28th birthday.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Bill Cipher, Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	27 club

**Author's Note:**

> warning: mentions of blood, an anxiety attack, language, and suicidal thoughts. please message me if more details are needed.

There was a snake in his car. 

Now, it wasn’t the snake that bothered Stan. No, Stan very much liked snakes. The way they wiggled across the ground was funny to look at and the way they even managed to move was weird to think about. It was the  _ how  _ that bothered Stan. It’s not like snakes can open car doors. 

Shivering from the outside of his car, Stan watched the snake slither on the dash, over his only winter coat. Stan did a lap around his car and saw nothing broken, but that didn’t comfort him. The snake’s tongue flicked out at Stan, his yellow eyes watching Stan. Stan waved a middle finger at it. 

“Oh, fuck this,” Stan curses, deciding that it was very cold and a snake isn’t about to take all the warmness of his car. He whips over the door and grabs the snake right behind the head, lifting it out of his car. It is when he is holding it triumphantly to his side when he sees the note tied around its neck. 

_ Happy 27th Birthday, Stanley Pines! Love, Rico _

Stan drops the snake from surprise and watches it slither into a bush with heavy breaths. His heart is beating hard enough it hurts and he wonders if this is what heart attacks feel like. 

“He found me? Already?” Stan asks aloud, waiting for nobody or a random hillbilly or god to answer. He runs his hands through his hair and grabs it, forgetting that he was cold and not knowing how to distribute his energy. 

“Shit,” Is all he can say to sum it all up before throwing himself in his old Diablo and peeling out of there. 

-

Ford’s eye is bleeding again.

It hadn’t for a few weeks but it’s bleeding again. 

Sliding down his face, beneath his glasses, the blood leaves a pink trail. There’s a line of red at the bottom of his vision, watering up like tears and blurring the reality he sees with a red hue.

“Bill,” he says to himself in the mirror, “You said this shouldn’t happen again.”

Ford blinks his eyes and Bill is there, behind his eyelids. His face is hard to read and the swinging of his cane doesn’t help. But there is a comfort that Ford feels for him. The world is dangerous and will turn it’s back on him but Bill is here helping him. Bill cares about him. 

“I know, Sixer,” Ford only thinks of Bill with the nickname. He supposes it originated from somewhere else, he just can’t remember where. “I said that. I really thought your eye wouldn’t bleed anymore. I really am possessing you as gently as I can, it’s just that I’m an all powerful demon and you’re a weak meat bag trying to contain it.”

Ford looks down at the blankness of his mindscape. There’s something creeping up his neck that makes it feel hot, seeping in through his bones and running out of his cheeks. Shame, it might be. Always with Bill, he feels like he’s ten steps behind in a race that he can’t improve in. He just is impossibly grateful that Bill slows down enough to even just talk to him. “I’ve been trying those meals you suggested but my body has always just been smaller.” The  _ smaller than who  _ remains unsaid. They both know who. 

“That’s why I’ve been saying that you should allow me to possess your body more than just at night.” Bill’s voice is quieter than normal. Smaller. “I can help your body get stronger, in addition to all the help I give for the gateway.” 

Bill has been mentioning that. Ford’s nervous but he trusts Bill. He trusts Bill. “Okay.”

Bill’s eye widens. “You really mean that?”

Ford smiles at his excitement. “Yes.” 

He sticks his hand out and Bill’s familiar blue warmth encompasses it. 

-

“Lo siento.”

“Shut up, Pines.”

A punch to his gut, leaving him breathless. He manages, “No hablo inglés. Lo siento.”

“You forget who taught you Spanish.” An attempt at his face but he dodges with a bloodied grin. 

Stan gestures to Rico’s shorter hair. “Tu cabello nuevo es muy guapo.” 

Rico catches Stan off guard and kicks out his legs, sending Stan on his back. He wheezes to try and get his breath back. “Stanley, I’d shut up if I were you.”

Stan spits out a wad of red on Rico’s shoes, “Good thing I’m not you, eh?”

With a heel to the face, Stan passes out. 

-

A deep feeling of being watched crawls up Ford’s spine. He jerks his head around to the front door or the diner and sees a bird fly away outside. He turns back around. 

“I should get you a Lazy Suzan.” 

Ford hums in question at Fiddleford, not meeting his eyes but instead watching his hands tap a beat against the table. Ford does another survey of the diner. The man at the bar just ordered his third cup of cold milk. Odd. 

“Y’know, those spinning things at dinner tables, to get food around.”

“I know what they are.” Ford sends a quick pointed glance at Fiddleford and sees that Fiddleford was already looking at him. He looks away quickly, to the window to his left. The wind rustles a bush. “I was wondering why you brought it up.”

Fiddleford keeps his tone flat, “The way that you’ve been surveying this place, I figured you could sit on it and spin it around so you could see everywhere more efficiently.”

“Ha ha,” Ford replies humorlessly. He hears a murmur of something with the inexcusable feeling of someone talking about him and turns around to see a man talking to a waitress two tables down. He seems to be flirting with her. Ford turns back around. “With the research we are doing, we can never be too cautious about who we let around us. There are ears everywhere.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something in the same vein as that.” Fiddleford looks down at his hands and begins to fold his napkin up. It becomes a small boat before he unfolds it and begins something else. “That person that you’ve been getting help from… there’s something about him.” 

Alarm bells go off in his head and Ford looks straight at Fiddleford with a furrowed brow. “What about him?”

Fiddleford looks up, seeming nervous, “I don’t trust him.”

“I trust him with my life.” Ford tilts up his chin, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

“What he does…” Fiddleford’s voice is quiet, “What he knows… it’s unnatural. There’s something going on with him.” 

“You’re just jealous. He supports me and cares about me. At least, more than you ever have.” 

“I don’t think you should see him anymore.” It’s said with enough finality that Ford is certain Fiddleford started the conversation just to say that line. 

“He helps me see my full potential.” 

“If he’s so great, why can’t I meet him?”

Ford is silent. Fiddleford wouldn’t understand. 

Fiddleford shakes his head with a mean sort of smile before Ford can respond. He lifts a thick stack of papers from his bag and slides them over to Ford, “This is a thesis, Stanford, with all your research. It includes abstract, data, and citations to refute. Take this, publish it, and put this gateway mess behind you.” 

Ford pushes it back to Fiddleford. “I can’t take this. You know it hasn’t been about the fame, it’s been about the pursuit of knowledge. I need to finish the portal.” 

Fiddleford stands up, shouldering his bag. “That’s what I thought you’d say. I’ll see you for the portal testing in a couple weeks.”

And so he left, leaving behind just a “PROBABILITY OF FAILURE” graph, shakingly scrawled on his folded up napkin. 

-

  
  


Stan sat on the same bridge, feet hanging through the railing. His coat wasn’t helping much. 

It was late in the night, the water far below appearing black. A pair of headlights made his hands look yellow for a few moments before abruptly stopping, the sound of a car engine stopping with it. Curious, Stan turned around and saw a woman get out of her car. 

Stan sighed and turned back around, hoping against hope that she wasn’t here to tell him to move his car or something equally terrible. He grabbed a rock next to him and threw it into the water. 

There’s slow steps approaching him, before he sees a pair of short heels appear next to him, the woman in them sitting down next to Stan with her feet hanging through the railing.

They are silent. A bird caws in the distance.

“So, what’re in for?”

Her voice is softer than he was expecting. He hums in question. 

“Just, the bars in front of your face remind me of prison bars- not that I’ve been to prison. Nevermind, it was a dumb joke.”

Nonetheless, Stan snorts with a shake of his shoulders, half-way to a laugh. “It was a good attempt.”

She bumps his shoulder with hers like they’re good friends. “What’s a handsome young man like yourself doing out here on a night like this?”

It’s been a long time since someone has called him a young man, let alone a handsome one, so maybe it’s that that makes him open up. He shrugs. “Just thinking about how shitty my life is, y’know, the usual reason someone sits out on a high bridge late at night.”

“Want to have a shitty life contest? It’s where we say the shit things in our life until we get too depressed to continue.”

Stan laughs, something true that he hasn’t done in a long time. It kinda hurts. “Sure.”

“Here,” She nudges a cigarette into his side and he takes it with a grateful smile, “You’ve earned it.”

“I haven’t done anything.” He says, even as he lights it.

She smiles back him, small with one side of her mouth. “You’ve agreed to my game. You go first.” She sticks her own cigarette in her mouth and takes a long drag.

“I haven’t seen my family in ten years.”

“Wow. Starting strong, I like it. I just failed my english final, so I’ll have to take the class again, but my family doesn’t have enough money for me to do that, so I’m probably going to have to drop out.”

Stan looks over at her for the first time and sees that she’s probably only a couple years younger than him. He breathes out a mouthful of smoke. “My dad kicked me out before I could graduate _ high school _ , beat that.” He tries a crooked smile but it feels watery as he tries to focus on the game and not his feelings. 

“Is that why you haven’t seen your family in years? He kicked you out, and you just didn’t come back?” Her voice is small, almost getting lost in the breeze. 

Stan nods, tapping the cigarette on his leg and watching the ash fall into the black. “Yeah, I was seventeen, twenty-seven now.”

“But, you were a minor!” She exclaims, louder than before, a redness coming to her cheeks. Perhaps from the cold.

“Pops didn’t care. He already had my bag packed and was just waiting for me to slip up.” Stan bumps the woman with his shoulder. “But, hey, you didn’t take your turn.”

She hums for a moment in thought. “My sister pushed me out of a tree when I was seven and I broke my arm.”

Laughing, “Ha! Siblings are the worst!” It’s meant to come out joking but comes half way to serious. “But, I love my brother more than anyone else, so who I am to talk.”

“How old’s your brother? Why don’t you go to him?”

“He’s my twin, and trust me, I’m doing him a favor by staying away.”

Stan’s cigarette is almost finished, so he snubs it on the ground before flicking it off the side. He pushes himself off the ground with a creak in his bones before helping the woman up. “Hey, I never got your name.”

“And I never got yours.” She stuck her hand out with a smile on her lips so Stan shakes it. “Donna.” 

“Stanley, but you can call me Stan.” It feels nice to be able to tell his real name to someone. “And thank you, I really appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem. Have a good night, Stanley.” With a parting wink, Donna makes her way to her car, and Stan to his, and they go their own ways.

-

Bill betrayed him.

Bill betrayed him.

(Fiddleford was right.)

Bill’s going to destroy the world. (Bill betrayed him.)

Ford couldn’t breathe. 

He just had to get this fucking enegy out and couldn’t. His hands were shaking. His hands were buzzing. The quill snapped in his fingers but he couldn’t feel it. The ink spilt all over the journal. He has red but didn’t remember buying more red ink. He’s just using his fingers. 

He’s standing up, pushing his chair back with the force and his head is spinning. The room is spinning and the ground moving from underneath him. His fingers are still red and he grabs his hair and pulls and pulls and now there is red in his hair. He sees red. Anger? No. His eye is bleeding again. 

He backs up and backs up until his back hits the wall and suddenly he is sitting down. He doesn’t remember going to the floor just suddenly being on the floor. His feet are buzzing. He’s breathing too fast so his heart is going into panic mode. He’s panicking? Yes. Yes. Bill betrayed him. His hands and feet are furthest from the heart, the heart stops bringing blood there first. Hands. Fingers. Six fingers. Sixer.

Sixer. That must have been a memory Bill altered. Ford couldn’t remember where it came from before. Bill betrayed him. Now he can remember. Stanley. Stan. Stan betrayed him. No? Yes? Bill betrayed him. Bill. triangle. C squared equals A squared plus B squared. School. How was Fiddleford doing? Fiddleford betrayed him. No? Yes? He’s going in circles. He can’t focus. He’s an idiot. He still couldn’t breathe. 

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe or you’ll pass out. Oh, god, what if he passes out? Passes out and Bill (who betrayed him) takes over his body and finishes the portal and destroys the world and he never sees Fiddleford again or his parents or Stanley or 

He can’t catch his breath. Fuck, he can’t catch his breath. The air scrapes its way out of his throat and his shirt feels too tight on his neck and he scratches his arms his legs his neck his face his eyes anything anything because needs to calm down. 

Black spots. Oh, no. 

“Bill,” He gasps, “Bill, please don’t. Bill.” The black spots are growing larger and larger until they are all consuming. 

He wakes up minutes or hours later. He’s in the kitchen (was in the thinking room before.) On the wall in big, scratched letters,  _ From now under the end of time  _ in a bright red. His eye stings. 

-

Without breaking stride, Stan takes a big gasp of air and dives into the lake. 

The water is freezing but it’s the pure adrenaline that fuels his fire. That and the gunshots peppering the water around him. He goes a little deeper and goes out as far as his lungs would take him. 

He bursts through the top of the water, biting his lip to stop it from shaking. He doesn’t take the time to look behind him but the splashing of water tells him everything he needs to know: he’s being followed. He takes another breathe and dives under the water again. 

He makes it to the other shore, cold down to the bone, and climbs up, but someone grabs his ankle and pulls. He falls down on his elbows hard, but uses the person’s body to kick off of and get back up. Stan can only hear one pair of footsteps behind him, so this person must have crossed the lake alone. 

Making up plans on the spot, Stan darts to the side and hides behind a bush before the goon can manage to turn the first time. The goon assumes that Stan had kept running and continues straight, stopped only by a large stick Stan holds up at the last minute, causing them to hit it directly. 

“Ha!” Stan cheers, only for it to be cut short by the goon charging him and tackling him to the ground, landing one, two punches to his face. 

Stan hears his nose crack and can’t help the involuntary watering of the eyes. He throws a clumsy punch upwards that is easily deflected. He wiggles and wiggles, throws a few more punches, and receives some too, before he can finally shove the guy off of him, popping up and resuming a boxing stance. 

Stan can feel his heart pounding through his bloodied nose. “C’mon, big guy, we’re just getting started.” Stan steps up to the goon and feigns a punch with his right hand and ends up landing one with his left. The guy swings back with too much weight and Stan can just step out of the way, with a hard hit to the guy’s ribs. He stumbles and turns quickly, throwing a punch too fast, so he is off balance. 

Stan just repeats the same move as before. “Hurry up and do something interesting! This is getting boring.” 

Going full force, Stan aims and hit for the goon’s jaw and connects. The guy gets a hit on Stan’s side. They trade some hits but Stan can tell the guy is tiring quicker than Stan is. 

The goon misses a critical hit and Stan can easily knock him to the ground, twisting his arm and keeping a foot to his neck. 

“Tell Rico, hi from Stanley. Oh, and don’t bother to try and come after me again. It’s not worth it.” Stan twists the guy’s arm enough so that it’s dislodged, the goon yelling in response. 

Stan hunches over, the adrenaline seeping out of him. His nose really hurts. He’s drier now but still cold from the lake. “I’m going to go sleep.” And so, he does that. 

-

Blood didn't use to bother Ford. 

He remembers Stanley, face young with hope, toothless grin and crooked nose dripping blood. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, laughs coming out in between labored breaths. Ford would always help him with his injuries. 

There were drops of blood on the ground. Staining the dark wood, making it almost seem black. Whispers fill his ears and his breath hitches. Where did that blood come from? He can’t remember.

Blank spots. Lots of them, swirling between visions of shadowing figures, triangles, and eyes, eyes everywhere. Following him. Not stopping. 

He couldn’t trust anyone around them. They all had eyes. Eyes to be taken over, to be swayed, to be turned against him. Watching him. Yellow against the setting sun, caught in the middle of a reflection, or Bill? Bill. Can’t take any chances. Can’t trust anyone.

Blood bothers Ford now. 

He wonders sometimes if he’ll run out, the way his life has been going. A constant river from his eye. A wound from Bill or something else he can’t remember. A new wound. He can’t keep track of them all. 

Looking back at his life, the guy he was in college seems like a different person. Going out in the world with a naive way of viewing the world. Smiling. Talking to people. Unknowing of what life would become. 

Ford misses the quiet. 

There’s a certain quietness with being in the woods or by a beach that isn’t quite completely silence but all the noise can fall into the background. Waves. Now there’s whispers. Always. Speaking of Bill. Languages he’s never heard of before. Atrocities that bring tears to his eyes. 

He’s tired. A tired that won’t be fixed with the sleep he desperately needs. A tired that has laid between his bones, settling underneath the tendons and muscles and Ford doesn’t think he can ever make it go away. Coffee doesn’t help. And Ford has tried a lot of coffee. 

Wandering through the shell of his house, Ford finds a postcard. He doesn’t remember buying it. He makes a split second decision and runs over to a desk fast enough that his head is spinning. Nearby, he sees a pen floating in a bowl of mysterious liquid. In a distant time he can picture his mom scolding him for keeping his room messy. He grabs the pen. 

_ PLEASE COME! -FORD _

-

Stan thought the summer nights were cold. Now, in the middle of winter with snow swirling around his car, he really felt the cold. 

His heater died somewhere in the last fifty miles. He sits on one hand to try and keep warm and takes periodic breaks to blow on the other one. He sits up close to the wheel, squinting through the snow. 

Making one last note of sound, his radio dies. 

A noise deep from his gut, born out of pure anger, emerges and he jerks the wheel over to the side of the road, throwing the car into park. 

He takes several deep breaths, doing them with the most anger a person could possibly put in a deep breath. 

From the spot in the passenger seat, Stan takes the map of the country he has and unfolds it. There’s many reds that jump out at him. He checks where he saw the road map and curses again. He’s only five miles out from Gravity Falls, Oregon. 

“Come on, Diablo, we’re almost there,” Stan pats the top of the dash and doesn’t actually know if he is talking to the car or himself at this point. With a sigh, he puts his car back into drive and continues on the road, his foggy breath puffing out of his mouth being the only way to tell that time was passing. 

Stan isn’t surprised as the route takes him deeper and deeper in the woods, but his heart rate increases all the same. He’s nervous about seeing Ford, his twin, his best friend, Sixer, again after all these years and he hates it. He shouldn’t be nervous about seeing his brother who he shared a womb with. 

The house creeps up all too soon, dark wood and darker windows looming above the thick snow. He sees barbed wire and fences. Not for the first time, Stan is worried about Ford. 

He parks and grabs his duffel bag. He takes a few deep breaths. “Stan. He reached out to you. He wants to see you. 

He steps out.

-

In the sixty seconds Ford counts that he was in the blue, Ford has to hold his breath. He finds out very quickly that there’s no air here and quickly begins to hold his breath. His coat is frozen still mid wave and everything is blue. He feels as if he’s moving through jelly and when he looks at his hands they’re blue. His clothes are blue. The only thing he can hear is his heart beating. Ford counts sixty seconds but it feels like an eternity. Who knows if it was actually a minute. Time might pass differently here. 

Without a proper transition, Ford is suddenly somewhere else. His back hitting a molten hot ground and knocking whatever breath he had left out of him. Bill’s laugh from somewhere and everywhere and it chills him to his core. 

He’s just arrived for the first time and not the last at a place that he would later know as: The Nightmare Realm. 

-

The brand was easy to treat. 

(He got an infection.)

The bed was too comfortable.

(He slept on the ground.) 

The house was disgusting.

(It was just red ink it was just red ink it was just red ink it was just red )

There was no food. 

(He went out and started a business.)

He needs to get Ford back.

(It would take longer than expected.)

-

Months later, Ford didn’t even realize his birthday had come. Time passed differently here. He spent the night in a tree, escaping beasts he couldn’t name, under stars he didn’t know the names of. 

-

Stan spent the night in the basement, laid beside a journal and a pair of glasses. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!


End file.
